About Donovan Fisher

Donovan Fisher is an Australian born painter and draftsman.

Born in Darwin, growing up in Perth.

Drawing and painting has been in Donovan’s life from when he was a little boy.

His dad drew lines with him and he would try to guess what these lines would create. It was a magical experience for a young boy, “it placed no limits on my imagination…”

Donovan discovered a love for Piano playing before returning to visual art.

He experienced a connection with rhythm, tone and nuances the piano could produce “Learning classical music and moving past just hitting the notes I started experimenting with nuances of tone, this lead me to the importance of composition. “ Sviatoslav Richter and Heinrich Neuhaus where massive influences at this time.”

Reading and connecting with the biographies of Paganini’s, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin and Einstein there seemed a way these men and others transcended both pain and sickness through the act of a dedicated purpose in creating something in, through and beyond themselves…

“This has been my inspiration within artistic endeavours, to move past oneself….’’

This brought Donovan back to his early wish of creating visually.

“Graphic recording came long before verbal recording of information.

Spirituality through images and internal questioning of the visual world came long before religion and religious questioning, it has no boundaries, social classes, secular to any one peoples or groups.

It is the first and continuing form of communication that opens for every human being, regardless of spiritual, sexual, political or racial groupings and or prejudice that exists in spacetime” Donovan explains.

Donovan completed a Bachelors degree in Fine Arts at Curtin University in Perth, being mentored from time to time by Perth Painter George Haynes whom kept him engaged in the importance of draughtsmanship and shape.

On completion of BA degree in Fine arts, he was invited to do the honors program.

A positive aspect Donovan expresses about his time at university especially in his Honors year was the ability to research and find rare information.

Donovan’s view on art has always been a instinctive one, in which words where fumbled at compared with poetic composition.

“The best things can not be known, the second best is that which is thought about and the least best is those that are talked about.”
-Joseph Campbell.

Donovan desired to learn skills in the field of painting where the idea and skill congealed to form a whole that moves on visually, emotionally and intellectually. Vincent Desiderio said;

“How the work is painted is every bit as important as what is painted. Both aspects must be addressed with intentionality”
Vincent DESIDERIO came, lived with and mentored Donovan for a period of 6 weeks.

Donovan travelled to Florence and studied privately under a few Painters that had inspired him through their work. He worked building the visual skills necessary to convey his genuine intellectual thirst to compose forms within the confines of the rectangle.

Donovan studied in florence with Elizabeth Hege and Zachariah Kramer.

Matthew Almy From Ravenswood Atelier lived in with Donovan for a period of 6 weeks where days and nights where spent in deep meditations about art.

Michelangelo, said
“I wanted to be better than everyone else so I studied the Greeks”.

That challenged Donovan for many years to grasp the meaning behind those words. Studying the Greeks, an awareness and knowledge came into light in relation to the sphere and axis.

“The sphere consists of the positive, negative and everything in between, which in itself is hard to conceptualize over, but can come about through accepting all sides in oneself, not being stilted by the semicircle”.
Donovan Fisher

“In Greek times the word artist did not exist, they where searching for where they stood in relation to something bigger and not what they created as individuals”, explains Donovan.

“You may strive and persist to find your own way, so as to communicate something bigger than the individual….
Art is full of paradoxes”.

After two dedicated decades, several exhibitions both locally and Internationally Donovan is now working towards a new exhibition.

“The word artist is a modernist term and while it has a purpose it is a sure limitation to rising oneself to a higher plane”.